Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The ARTISTS In Trumpet!

Here is write up sent to me by the director of "Visual Arts Alberta". It details each individual artist in the coming "Trumpet" exhibition which shows at the Latitude 53 gallery here in Edmonton. I placed my section in red, have not read it as that sort of "ME" thingy makes me rather uncomfortable.The Opening night is June 3 at 8pm.------------------------------------------------------

Trumpet

"With the pride of the artist,
you must blow against the walls of every power that exists the small trumpet of
your defiance."

Norman Mailer

The exhibition
Trumpet
is framed by defiance: a reaction to the political climate in which we find ourselves
and our need to be heard. Each artist shown use their work as a megaphone: to
give warning, to speak out, to increase the power of their message.

Trumpet sought work by Alberta Artists who use their work
to question new political realities, on a local, national, and
international scale, and who may have a unique perspective that is
under-represented or unrecognized within current exhibition and curatorial
practices. The six selected artists - Barbara Amos, Lee Deranger, Kazumi
Marthiensen, M.E.D.I.U.M., Alice Schoenberg and Gerry Yaum - question the world
order in some way. Their art trumpets. It can be a loud lament about an issue,
a call to action, a direct challenge to assumptions and oppressive power
structures, a vehicle to further understanding or a way to redefine the world
around us.

Barbara Amos raises questions,
stimulates new conversations and possibly new actions; she offers a new way for
people to engage with the world. Since establishing a studio in the Crowsnest
Pass area of Alberta, Amos has sought out and engaged with the environmental
groups that are fighting to preserve the trees on the eastern slopes of the
Canadian Rockies - an area experiencing the world’s highest rate of
deforestation. Amos collaborates with others “in the field” to make political
environmental statements. In the gallery, Amos use concepts of beauty (a moment
of receptivity) to open us up to new connections and to an exchange of ideas.

Lee
Deranger is a First Nations artist based out of Calgary, whose politics are at
the heart of her creative practice. Deranger’s “Reconcile This” confronts a 268
year old “scalp law” that is still on the books in Nova Scotia. She offers the
viewer three scalps: one for the British, one for Canada and one for Nova
Scotia. Created after 2015’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and exhibited
here in the year of Canada’s 150th birthday, Deranger’s “Reconcile This”
challenges privileged narratives and assumptions, and reveals the many blind
spots in the dominant cultural discourse regarding the relationship between
Canada’s colonial history and First Nations and Metis lives and history. This
work slaps the viewer across the face; the slap is totally justified.

Kazumi Marthiensen has been exploring
and questioning the environmental destruction and crime arising from the
establishment of the American military base in Okinawa, Japan. Marthiensen
recognizes and addresses the lack of understanding of the post-war experience
in Okinawa by offering us a written explanation, a didactic statement that is
all the more poignant for its simplicity. This simplicity and attention
to detail extends to the work itself, and presents an arresting testament to
what is (still) happening on this small island 755 kilometers south of
Nagasaki. This work has a stillness, a silence about it, that underscores
this under-told story, and exposes the complexities surrounding the defeat of
Japan in the Second World War and the resulting American colonialism.

M.E.D.I.U.M.
(Metaphysical Explorations, Divination, and Investigations Utilizing Magic) is
a Lethbridge-based quartet comprised of Frater Tham, Madame Symona, Char Latan,
and Dr. I. M. Auftenhazie. The performative personas are adopted by the quartet
to subvert the notion of artistic “ego,” and take “authority,” out of the
equation when making art. The collective is very much engaged in the world’s
political issues, and use allegory, symbolism and magic to explore (and
subvert) notions of what real or concrete truth is. The video and artifacts
“Reduce, Reuse, Re-psychic” present us with an alternative “ritual curse and
healing narrative” to heal the planet and the creatures upon it, including
humans. M.E.D.I.U.M. provides us with new ways to both relate and react to our
current political reality, and seek lasting change for the better.

Alice Schoenberg uses her body to
create art that attempts to simultaneously divert and analyze the male gaze. As
a queer female artist, Schoenberg sexualizes the representation of her embodied
self, but retains control of this sexualization. “Miss Dressup,” employs
a childlike aesthetic to both expose and subvert the common cultural narratives
around sexualized female bodies. These versions of self are not her - they are
fragments of version of stories about what it means to inhabit a queer female
shape that wishes to define itself on its own terms. Schoenberg’s art provokes
a conversation about power, identity, control, sexuality, and how these forces
impact our bodies.

Gerry Yaum is a traditional documentary
photographer who works outside his culture and his comfort zone. This place of
discomfort allows Yaum to do more than observe his subject; he strives to see
them on their own terms. By the second or third visit to a place, Yaum notes,
the people he photographs “know you are no longer a tourist.” Like the
artists in M.E.D.I.U.M., Yaum has adopted a ‘persona’ in an attempt to focus
greater attention on the issues and ideas conveyed through his images (Yaum is
a pseudonym). As records of lived experience, “the Families of the Dump” series
presents a deeply uncomfortable vision of the world, the intention of which
Yaum describes as wanting to “slap [the viewer] out of their indifference.”
People living in ‘first world’ countries will likely never experience the
extreme poverty captured in these photographs. The intent here is to provoke a
level of discomfort that will lead us to question not only the present world
order, but our own complicity in it.

Trumpet player Christian Scott describes
his instrument as a political weapon; "I
don't just play the trumpet because it's something that resonates with me: I
play the trumpet because it's a means to help free a lot of people that ain't
free." Like Scott, to get their message out, the artists of Trumpet
ask
us to question what we hold to be true. They force us to listen. They are
Advocates, Activists, and Artists.

GERRY YAUM'S Photography Website

GERRY YAUM'S Documentary Film Making Blog

GERRY YAUM: YouTube Video PHOTOGRAPHY CHANNEL

Shows, photo stories, darkroom work, shooting in the field and fun videos.

GERRY YAUM'S VIMEO Video Page

Gerry Yaum On Facebook

GERRY YAUM FACEBOOK

THE GOAL

To create photographs that speak to the universality, the commonality and the shared humanity of all peoples, regardless of country, race, culture or language.

TRANSLATE YAUM'S PHOTO DIARY INTO YOUR LANGUAGE

Quote: Robert F. Kennedy

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better.”

Quote: Nelson Mandela

"As long as poverty, injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest."

Quote: Weegee (Authur Fellig)

"Be original and develop your own style, but don't forget above anything and everything else...be human...think...feel. When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know your on the right track....Good luck."

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DONATE TO GERRY YAUM "Lost Innocence" Project

"Lost Innocence" Project, PLEASE HELP

I am trying to raise $10000 CAD for a project I am calling "Lost Innocence" this project will be a series of 100 plus portraits shot in brothels all around Thailand. I hope to raise awareness and educate others through public talks and showings of the work in the West. If the people can see the faces of these trafficked women and girls maybe some solutions to stop this sex slavery, this crime against humanity, can be found. Photography has the power to cause change, please help me tell these girls stories.

All $10000 CAD will go towards the production of the photographs which will take an estimated 6 months to complete. Please help, thank you. Gerry

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"Lost Innocence" Project, PLEASE HELP

I am trying to raise $10000 CAD for a project I am calling "Lost Innocence" this project will be a series of 100 plus portraits shot in brothels all around Thailand. I hope to raise awareness and educate others through public talks and showings of the work in the West. If the people can see the faces of these trafficked women and girls maybe some solutions to stop this sex slavery, this crime against humanity, can be found. Photography has the power to cause change, please help me tell these girls stories.

All $10000 CAD will go towards the production of the photographs which will take an estimated 6 months to complete. Please help, thank you. Gerry

The Three Joys Of Photography

I have been thinking of why I love photography, it comes down to something I have labeled "The Three Joys"1) Creativity The first joy is simply creating the work. Everything about the making of photographs I love. The initial ideas, the writing on the blog, the preparation of equipment, the research into my subjects, figuring out what I want to communicate. The camera tech stuff like composition, lens selection, cameras, figuring exposure, taking the shot etc. The post darkroom work where you swim with your prints bringing them slowly to life, creating something powerful and beautiful. I love it all.

It is so powerful a thing, you have a idea in your mind, there is nothing else, then YOU make it, you create it, it's fricking awesome stuff.

2) The People The second joy is that photography has allowed me a way into so many peoples lives, so many different worlds. I get to meet people of all types, speak to them, eat with them, cry and laugh with them. For a while I get to live their existence to be them if you will.

I get to be a child in a slum in Bangkok or a drug addict in a ghetto in Oakland. I get to be a ladyboy sex worker in Pattaya or a man dying of cancer in Canada. Of course I am not really those people but I get a true flavor for those worlds, those experiences, the good and the bad, the ugly and the beautiful, the joy and the sadness.

With photography I get a chance to live outside of the same same everyday meat and potato lives many of my friends and family live. Because I use a camera and make pictures all the doors to a wonderful life experience are open to me, photography is a window into everything!3) The Photograph The third joy is about the feeling you get when you accomplish your goals, when you see your final print in the developer, fix or hanging in a gallery. There is a special emotion there, a true satisfied happiness, something so uniquely rewarding. In the darkroom sometimes when I see the finished photo for the first time as it lays in the fixer tray I will let out hoops of joy. I will scream and shout. It is quite a spectacle! It's just the sheer high of that moment bursting out, the YES moment. When the photo is right and you see it for the first time it's the best feeling in the world, better than anything I have ever felt, the high of highs!!

"Ain't Photography Grand!"

"Can a photograph stop a war? Can it save a life? Can it lead to understanding, inspire someone to help, provide comfort and open the door to compassion?